by Dave DeMars
news@thenewsleaders.com
Shooting the breeze at a Wood Expo in Sauk Rapids, woodworkers Al Gerads of Rice and Pam Witte of Milaca shared ideas of what goes into the making of a good woodcarver: one idea has to do with potatoes, the other with ducks.
“Well, the guys I started carving with told me that if I could peel potatoes, I could be a carver,” Witte told Gerads with a chuckle. “And I said, ‘You ain’t seen me peel potatoes, have you?’ ”
Gerads sticks by his duck theory.
“If you are going to carve a duck, you carve away all the wood that don’t look like a duck,” he told Witte.
Witte and Gerads were just two of the many woodworkers at the 11th annual Wood Expo last weekend at the Benton County Fairgrounds. Most of those were from three area organizations: Central Minnesota Woodworkers Association, Central Minnesota Woodcarvers Association and the Central Minnesota Woodturners Association.
This year’s expo was a little different because the wood workers invited area quilters from around the area to join in the expo.
Brenda Lodermeier, a retired firefighter-turned-pyrographer, was co-chair of the wood expo and talked about the challenges in holding the expo. It’s more than just a wood show, she explained.
“A lot of times guys say, ‘I want to go to the wood show,’ and they want to drag their wives along, and they (the wives) go kicking and screaming, but if there are quilters there, (the wives) might be more interested,” Lodermeier said.
For Charlie Gunderson, president of the Central Minnesota Woodworkers Association, wood has provided a way to make a living. After graduating with an associate’s degree in carpentry from St. Cloud Vo-Tech in the mid-1970s, he worked in the cabinet industry.
“When I was a kid growing up, I was always making things out of peach crates in the basement,” he said. “So that is what drew me to woodworking.”
Gunderson has seen a lot of changes during his four decades of woodworking. For one, there was none of the computer-controlled equipment now common in many shops.
“Basically everything was done by hand,” he said. “If you wanted curves cut, we had band saws and that kind of thing, but nowadays we have computerized machinery where you can draw it (a project), put it in a CNC router and cut it.”
It’s that kind of thing that makes it possible to mass produce a piece of furniture or a plaque over and over again, but Gunderson still cuts his parts out using table saws and band saws, unless he is doing production work on a larger scale, because he said he enjoys the challenge.
“A lot of people would disagree with me on that, but woodworking is an art,” he said. “There’s a lot of things I can do with wood that people don’t know how I do them.”
Wood carving
Witte, chair of the Central Minnesota Woodcarvers Association, showed many of the pieces she created during her 30 years of carving.
“I see things that I like, and I want to see if I can make it for myself,” she said.
One carver said he was offered $700 for a carving because the collector figured to make $1,400 selling it elsewhere. In the end, he decided to make a present of it to his granddaughter.
Gerads, treasurer for the Woodcarvers Association, said he has been carving for more than 25 years. The reason he keeps at it, he said, is it’s a stress reliever and helps him focus.
“A sharp knife and a block of wood – if you don’t keep your wits about you, you’re going to ruin your carving or cut yourself,” Gerads said with a chuckle.
Curt Hutchens, long-time woodcarver, showed one piece made in Asia of a moose with its baby and asked what was wrong with the depiction. The problem, he explained, is the moose is a bull.
“You would never see a bull tending to a calf in real nature,” Hutchens said. “You’ll never see that in any of my pieces.”
The closing ceremony
The patience of woodworkers is immense. Not only because they patiently work on a piece until it is just the way they want it, but because, at expos like this one, they patiently answer the same questions again and again.
At the end of the day, the woodworkers presented special “honor canes” to three World War II veterans, each of whom had been awarded a Purple Heart for wounds suffered in combat. Each cane was hand-carved by Hutchens, a former teacher and woodcarver.
The Purple Heart, the nation’s oldest military decoration, was originally established by Gen. George Washington on Aug. 7, 1782 at Newburgh and was called the “Badge of Military Merit.” The medal has a storied history and underwent a name change and redesign at various times.
Macy Eisenschenk, 7, of St. Stephen, tries her hand at sawing a board at the Wood Expo held April 16 in Sauk Rapids.
Al Gerads of Rice is the treasurer of the Central Minnesota Woodcarvers Association and stands surrounded by some of his many carvings at the Wood Expo April 16 in Sauk Rapids.
Pam Witte of Milaca is the chairwoman of the Central Minnesota Woodcarvers Association. Here she displays at the Sauk Rapids expo some of the many wood carvings she’s done throughout the 30 years she’s been carving.
Three World War II veterans, each of whom had previously been awarded the Purple Heart, were honored with the presentation of hand-carved “Honor Canes” carved by Curt Hutchens during the Woodworkers Show. The veterans are (from left to right): Edwin R. Albrecht of Wabasha, Minn., who was wounded in 1945 during action in the Rhineland France Campaign; Maurice “Max” Wenker of Melrose, Minn., who was wounded in the “Big Apple” battle on June 10, 1945 in Okinawa, Japan; woodcarver Hutchens; and Earl W. Hoppenrath, who was wounded at Dessau, Germany, in 1945.
